It is easy to convert a Warnier-Orr Diagram into structured program code because of its use of BEGIN-END block structure format.

Warnier-Orr Diagrams provide good data structure documentation. Studies have shown that good data structure documentation is more useful than procedural documentation for designing software.

Disadvantages

At a detailed level, a Warnier-Orr Diagram can become large and difficult to read.

Warnier-Orr Diagrams do not show detailed logic as well as other diagrams such as an Action Diagram. They do not show what condition is tested to determine which module is selected. To overcome this limitation, footnotes may be used to describe conditions.

Warnier-Orr Diagrams are not database oriented. They can represent hierarchical data structures but cannot represent relational or network data structures.

Warnier-Orr Diagrams are too difficult to maintain manually. A properly selected tool is critical. The tool must be able to support the size of effort. On one project, the tool selected took eight hours to print one Warnier-Orr Diagram. It is very difficult to meet deadlines when it takes so long to produce one chart.

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Craig has over 25 years of Technology Consulting experience including 10 years in Project Leadership roles. He has extensive background working with large scale, high-profile systems integration and development projects that span a customer’s organization, and experience designing robust solutions that bring together multiple platforms from Intel to Unix to Mainframe technologies with the Internet.